Thursday, May 08, 2008

Vegetarian Myths, Debunked

"Hmm..." I thought. "Could this be from someone who reads my blog? Or maybe it's from a family member or friend who decided to become a vegetarian. How weird."

Well, I was wrong.

It wasn't from anyone who I knew, nor was it from one of you fantastic bloggers. Instead, it was an article from www.slate.com, which is an on-line mostly politically-based "magazine," and is honestly one of the last places that I'd expected to read about vegetarianism.

Thus, I began reading the article, fully expecting to encounter a tirade against vegetarianism - "Humans are meant to eat meat! Vegetarians have such a superiority complex! It's impossible to get enough protein if you're eating like that!" Etc.

Surprisingly, the complete opposite occurred. The article was informative and humorous, and was quite conversational in tone. In fact, the author managed to provide both a brief explanation of vegetarianism and an olive branch of sorts to those who are not of the herbivorous persuasion.

And, so, it's with great pleasure that I pass the article on to you. Hopefully you'll find it as enjoyable to read as I did...

Oh, and just in case you don't have time to read the whole thing, check out the following snippet. It's the author's message to "the hardworking chefs at America's dining establishments:"

"Vegetarians actually enjoy food, especially the kind that tastes good. So enough with the bland vegetable dishes, and, for God's sake, please make the Gardenburgers stop; it's stunning how many restaurants lavish unending care on their meat dishes yet are content to throw a flavorless hockey puck from Costco into the microwave and call it cuisine.

I'll even offer a handy trick. Pretend you're trapped in a kitchen stocked with every ingredient imaginable, from asiago to zucchini, but with zero meat. With no flesh available, picture what you'd make for yourself; this is what we want, too."

Click here to read more of Taylor Clark's article, "Meatless Like Me."

5 comments:

Thank you for sharing this! Prior to becoming a vegetarian, I lived a boring food life. Always the same thing, never any variety. Becoming a vegetarian has opened my eyes to a whole new world of food that people seems to think is limited to the vegetarian or ethnic community. It's a shame. oy

I enjoyed reading this. I hadn't seen the article because I've been boycotting Slate since reading an article about eating squirrel, in which they helpfully included a video about finding and killing squirrels in Central Park. Such unnecessary crap, in my opinion.